The recent international summit “Accelerating Broadband in India: Complementing Fiber Optics with Wireless Fiber” held in New Delhi discussed the various possibilities of rolling out the Wireless Fiber technologies in the E&V band. This method can take broadband to remote areas where the extension of the optical fiber is difficult. It will also enable affordable broadband in India. The non-profit organization Broadband India Forum (BIF) conducted the summit.
“Broadband can be truly enabled by deploying fiber everywhere but that is not feasible due to costs involved and deployment challenges. E & V bands can provide tremendous acceleration to Digital India as they provide fiber-like speed and capacity at competitive costs besides excellent customer experience,” said Mr. M.F. Farooqui, Chairman – BIF.
Besides the broadband deployment, the summit also discussed the policy and regulatory issues.
Speaking at the conference, Mr. J. S. Deepak, Secretary, Department of Telecommunications said, “The Government is looking at the next area of reforms and the usage of the higher frequency spectrum in the millimeter wave is definitely a focus area for us. We are working to see how 21 Ghz right up to the V band can be better used.”
“The V band is obviously the special spectrum as it has a great scope because of its capacity for backhaul, ability to aggregate Wi-Fi hotspots and its low interference property due to oxygen absorption. The TRAI recommendation makes use of these frequencies and broadly talks about the mix of licensing including light touch regulations and de-licensing,” he added.
These bands can act as a “fiber extension” to extend broadband connectivity from existing points of presence (“PoPs”) to nearby locations for a number of applications in urban, semi-urban, and rural areas. A few emerging 60 GHz band technologies can now offer one or two orders of magnitude cost reduction over fiber and existing mill metric band backbone networks.
“The innovations paired with the global momentum behind the IEEE 802.11ad, or WiGig, the standard also uses the 60 GHz band. It makes available very low-cost semiconductors and system solutions. Global momentum behind IEEE 802.11ad chipsets is key to driving opportunities in the 60 GHz band. Currently, the 802.11ad based 60 GHz band hosts a broad range of services including outdoor wireless links that extend the reach of fiber networks and personal networking technologies that deliver multi-gigabit speeds between devices,” elucidated at the summit.
Summit attendees included senior members from the Government, such as DoT, TRAI, Niti Aayog, MeitY, CDOT, BSNL, and BBNL. It also had representatives from Telecom Service Providers, Internet Service Providers, Technology Providers, Microwave Device and Semiconductor Manufacturers, Smart City Solution Providers, educational and research organizations, User organizations (Banks, Defence, etc.) and other allied industries.
